FMU BMW X5

Confession: I’ve had a long-running man-crush on Fluid Motor Union ever since I first stumbled across their posts on the StanceWorks forums. Their famous flame-spitting Gallardo image is my Ps3 wallpaper, every day I look forward to their in-depth posts about the latest goings-on at the shop, and I constantly day-dream of sending my Datto over to the land of 1-gallon soda cups for a bespoke one-off FMU exhaust system. Not only do they do some of the cleanest and most impressive fabrication work I’ve seen, but they take the time to document their daily activities on their own blog and various forums, so people like you and me can enjoy gawking at glorious TIG beads from our computer screens all over the world.

Recently the team embarked on giving a damaged BMW X5 a new lease on life, but kept a lot of the progress shrouded in secrecy, until now…

10 Responses to “FMU BMW X5”

Absolutely awesome and original, and I have to agree with one of the responses in the build thread that it was surprising to see a lifted vehicle getting a positive reception on SW. Being a person that spends most of his time on domestic v8-related forums, I have to say that SW is much more open minded to outside-the-box thinking, they have a lot of interesting and cool ideas on there. It was good to see they even opened up to a vehicle going skyward too.

So wait.. I don’t get it. They made a tubular front bumper, a snorkel that will never be used, added a roof rack, some $100 spacers and generic american racing wheels with knobby tires? That’s it? It looks cool, no doubt… but… did they actually do anything other than that? Did they add locking diffs, or boost the power up? Or a low gear? Not really that impressed… :\

Rob: Same here, I just dont get why they have done any of it either. Token matt paint, useless snorkel, tubular front bumper (most of it’s fine but what’s the purpose of the L shaped piece poking randomly forward and up??) Add a load of weight on top to make it more unstable…..wtf! Im unimpressed too!! Having rebuilt my mk2 Golf from the ground up with an engine conversion on my driveway and a bike engined sandrail from scratch in the pipeline this is nothing!

[…] of automotive indulgence with you all. In fact, I have previously featured one of their builds, the FMU BMW X5, where I briefly touched on my penchant for these guys. Let me be clear, this is not an […]

I have an 02 x5 that is 4.6 is…..it’s super fast and I’m contemplating getting big tires on it so that it looks lifted….my dad has tires like that on his truck …..I just love the way it looks…..but will my gas milleage go down with bigger, heavier tires? …oh and will speed go down as well? I dunno……I’m a girl!!! Don’t know much about this stuff lol…..help!

Hi there I am about to do similar to what you have done to your X5 because yours is amazing I would Appreciate any tips and feed back to help me along the way. I have a 2003 X5 4.4 V8 and am about to start the process of the new cosmetic and mechanical rebirth. Look forward to hearing back from you. Cheers